Four Things Not to Do!

Thank you, choir and orchestra.

And I do want to mention if you enjoy singing, there is an opportunity this, in fact, today they're beginning to practice for the Christmas program.

And they're looking for some more voices to join with the choir.

You don't need any special training.

They've promised you won't be asked to do a solo.

But we would really love to have more voices join for the Christmas program.

So if you're available, practices at 3 p.m.

today.

You don't need to do anything but show up.

They'll give you the music and help you along.

So I just want to encourage you if you would like to do that.

This is your invitation, and you can be here today at 3 p.m.

for practice.

There'll just be a few practices and then the Christmas program in December.

As we continue our worship time, I'd encourage you to turn in the Gospel of Luke to chapter 21.

I will be reading verses 5 through 19.

And you can also find that on page 880 in the Bible that's located there in the pew in front of you on that little shelf, page 880.

And you can follow along as I read.

Also, as we mentioned each week, if you don't own a Bible, please take that one home as our gift to you.

We would love for you to have it.

Luke chapter 21, beginning in verse 5.

Luke 21 · chapter mention

And while some were speaking of the temple, how it was adorned with noble stones and offerings, he said, As for these things that you see, the days will come will there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.

And they asked him, Teacher, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when these things are about to take place?

And he said, See that you are not led astray, for many will come in my name, saying, I am he, and the time is at hand.

Do not go after them.

And when you hear of wars and tumults, do not be terrified, for these things must first take place, but the end will not be at once.

Then he said to them, Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.

There will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and pestilence, and there will be terrors and great signs from heaven.

But before all this they will lay hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors for my name's sake.

This will be your opportunity to bear witness.

Settle it therefore in your minds not to meditate beforehand how to answer, for I will give you a mouth and wisdom which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict.

You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends, and some of you they will put to death.

You will be hated by all for my name's sake, but not a hair of your head will perish.

By your endurance you will gain your lives.

This is God's word.

We thank you for your enabling grace and for your goodness to us.

We thank you for the gospel for Jesus Christ for his death and resurrection.

And we ask you now to work in our midst.

We pray in Christ's name.

Amen.

Persecution is coming.

That was Jesus' message to his disciples, and that's his continuous message to us as his church.

In some ways, this passage, chapter 21, is difficult for us to understand, and some of it has to do with the nature of prophecy.

Oftentimes, uh, both in the Old Testament and here in the New Testament, we find in prophecy that there is what scholars refer to as a dual fulfillment.

I remember one of my professors talking, and he said it's like twin mountains standing in front of one another.

And as you're looking at the first mountain, that may be all you see at the moment, but you don't realize that there is another mountain behind it.

And so often when we're looking at the Old Testament or looking at passages like this, it's confusing because uh there are references here that Jesus makes to events that happened shortly after the time of his resurrection.

And yet, almost without any hesitation, there's a transition to future events in the time of the great tribulation prior to the second coming of Christ.

And so when we come to passages like this, we may wrestle trying to understand where these various things fit in.

And so I want us to recognize that there is both in this passage near fulfillment that happened in the lifetime of the apostles, but also there's a far fulfillment that much of what is said in chapter 21, uh Jesus is looking forward to that time prior to his return.

Oftentimes, these dual fulfillments, the initial one, may be a pattern or a type of later events.

In fact, we see this in the Old Testament with the Exodus.

And oftentimes the deliverance of God, they look back to the time of the Exodus and they look at that as a pattern for God's deliverance.

And we even see that in the coming of Christ, who is the great deliverer.

The section that we're going to cover this morning in large part deals with uh pronouncements that Jesus makes towards the Jews of his day that were fulfilled in 70 A.D.

There's a reference to the temple, and this refers to Herod's temple that by the time that Jesus spoke, this had been in construction for 46 years.

In fact, it wasn't finished until 63 A.D., just seven years before its destruction.

And historians tell us that it was an ornate, lavish, beautiful building.

In fact, many scholars say that it surpasses many of the seven ancient wonders of the world.

It would have been a magnificent building to behold.

And Jesus here talks of the destruction of the temple, something that would have been almost impossible for the disciples looking at it to imagine.

But Jesus says that judgment was certain and unavoidable.

The Jews had rejected the Messiah.

They were filled with hypocrisy.

They had oppressed the poor.

They missed the day of visitation when Jesus was here on earth.

They rejected the gospel and ultimately they had slain the Son of God.

God's people would be caught in the midst of the persecution that was going to be coming.

And we are caught in persecution today.

In fact, later in the Bible, it tells us that all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will face persecution.

And so we find there was persecution in the time of Jesus' day and the days after his resurrection.

We find that there is persecution today.

And as we look forward towards the end, we see and we will see that in increasing measure there's going to be persecution, particularly during the time of the end leading to the second coming of Christ.

And so the question that we need to answer is how will we respond or how do we respond in the midst of persecution?

Jesus here challenges his disciples and, by extension, challenges us to glorify God in the midst of persecution.

And he does that by giving us four commands.

There are four commands here in this passage we'll examine this morning that tell us how we can glorify God in the midst of persecution.

Jesus will tell us first, don't be led astray.

Second, he will tell us, don't be terrified.

Third, he will tell us, don't stop witnessing.

And finally, he tells us, don't give up.

Don't give up.

Don't lose heart.

Don't quit.

And so let's look at the first command of these four.

Jesus tells us, don't be led astray.

In verse 8 of chapter 21, he says, and he says to them, see that you are not led astray.

And really, this is a call to stability.

From the time of Jesus' first advent until the second coming, there will be people who claim to be the Messiah.

There will be predictions of this being the end.

And I think for us as believers, we like to think of ourselves as being above being fooled.

We like to think of ourselves as thinking that this could never happen to us.

We could never be deceived, we could never be led astray, we could never follow a false teacher, a false prophet, a false Messiah.

But Jesus warns us, as he warned his disciples, to guard their hearts because deception is very possible for any one of us.

The Bible tells us in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 12, it says, take heed, watch yourself, you who think you stand, lest you fall.

1 Corinthians 10:12

And it's very possible for us in our knowledge, in the maturity that we have, in the years that we've walked with Christ, to say, we can't be tempted, we can't be led astray.

This would never happen to us.

But there's a warning that uh we need to be careful of the danger of overconfidence.

We can become so confident in our knowledge and our experience and in the level of maturity that we have that we think we're we're beyond being fooled.

And so here Jesus tells his disciples, see to it that you're not led astray.

Satan is the enemy of our souls, and he's a deceiver.

We have an active enemy that's walking about, seeking whom he may devour, and he is the great deceiver.

Paul writing to the Corinthian church in 2 Corinthians chapter 11, he warns them of this very reality.

2 Corinthians 11 · chapter mention

He warns them of the possibility of being decepted.

In fact, it had already started to happen.

And this is what Paul writes in verse 3 of chapter 11.

He says, But I'm afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.

He tells them that they're already in the process of being led astray from that sincere, pure devotion that they had to Christ.

And later in that chapter, he he warns of false teachers and the reality that they're really servants of Satan, and they actually follow uh in his footsteps, and he says this for such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.

And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.

Satan, the great deceiver, is out not only to deceive non-believers, to not trust in Christ, he not only blinds the minds of unbelievers so that they do not see the light of the glory of the gospel, but he also is a deceiver of the brethren to try to get us off track and to draw us astray.

Well, how does he do that?

Jesus warns of false prophets, he warns of false messiahs, and they claim to be deliverers from God, but they're but they're deceivers.

In that passage in 2 Corinthians chapter 11, Paul uh makes the same observation.

2 Corinthians 11 · chapter mention

He says this, he says, For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.

Jesus says, we can be deceived into believing a different Jesus.

The most effective deception is the one that's just a hair's breadth from the truth.

Satan doesn't want you necessarily to go so off track that uh that you've rejected everything that you've come to believe.

What he wants to do is subtly shift and switch your understanding just enough that you get off track.

And if you get off track long enough and far enough, you'll be far away from where you're supposed to be.

And that's how the deceiver works in our lives.

There's another Jesus.

We begin to believe things about Jesus that are different from what we find in the pages of Scripture.

He says we can follow a different spirit and begin to believe a different gospel.

That the gospel becomes distorted and we become confused in what we understand.

We can be deceived by believing and receiving a message.

Uh, and sometimes we allow our emotions to dictate what we believe is true.

One of the sad realities, I have a friend of mine who's a pastor, and and his and I knew his family and and his daughter, as she grew up in the church, she grew up in a pastor's home.

She grew up going to church and youth group and and eventually went off to college.

And she met a man who was Mormon.

And over time, throughout the conversations, eventually she drifted away, and now she is a part of the Mormon religion.

It's sad to see what has happened in her life.

The Jesus they proclaim is not the Jesus of the Bible.

The salvation that they offer is not the gospel found in the New Testament.

They ask you to pray and see if you'll have a burning in your bosom, but it's a different spirit that's at work.

Satan in his subtlety can deceive us if we don't guard our hearts and our minds.

Notice what Jesus says here in Luke chapter 21 in warning his disciples and warning us.

Luke 21 · chapter mention

There can be false Jesuses, there can be false spirits, there can be false gospels, and there can be false expectations of the future.

Eschatology, the study of the end times, is a is a worthy discussion for each one of us.

In fact, uh there's a lot of predictive prophecy in the Bible, and it and it does us well to study and to think about it and to read and to try to understand the things that God says in his word and to put them together.

But even having said that, there's a danger in a lot of speculative theology of going beyond what the text of Scripture says and beginning to try to fill in all of the pieces to say, I know exactly how it's going to happen and when it's going to happen, and I can show you proof.

He calls it the this is that theology.

The this is that theology.

And what it is is basically this.

Somebody looks at a current event that's happening, and then he looks at his Bible and he says, aha, this, what is happening right here, is that, and if this is that, we can then track forward with certainty exactly what's going to happen next and when it's going to happen.

And I've sat in seminars and lectures and in different classes and have read books that have tried to outline the details of exactly when the end is going to happen, and they look at uh current events to try to prove that.

The difficulty is, is when those events pass and and it doesn't pan out the way that they have said, uh eventually that that prophet will reinterpret the events and we'll wait till the next historic event and then we'll make another emphatic declaration.

But Jesus warns us to be wary of people who claim to have inside information and secret knowledge that none of the rest of us have from reading our New Testament.

And so there's a caution for us that we find here in the pages of Scripture to be careful that we don't follow date setters and sign readers.

In fact, that's exactly what Jesus says.

And look at verse 8 again.

He says, For many will come in my name, saying, I am He and the time is at hand.

And Jesus says, Don't go after them.

Do not go after them.

If people are date setters and sign readers, and they can tell you exactly when these events are going to unfold and give you 88 reasons or 94 reasons, that they can make pronouncements, that the the end of the church age is has already happened.

All of those types of prophecies and predictions, Jesus says, don't follow.

Don't follow date setters and sign readers.

And that doesn't mean that we don't look forward to and anticipate the end.

But I love what one speaker I heard recently said.

He said, we need to recognize that Jesus didn't put us on the planning committee, he put us on the welcoming committee.

And so we're to be prepared and ready for his coming.

But we need to recognize that uh that God is going to work in his way in his time, and he's not going to come to me and ask for my opinion on how it should end.

And so we need to be careful to guard our hearts not only against false prophets, but against false prophecies.

Well, how do we guard against being deceived?

We need to recognize the importance of Bible knowledge.

We need to recognize the importance of studying our Bibles well, of studying doctrine, and that gets a bad rap, honestly.

Studying theology and studying doctrine gets a bad rap, and we think, well, you know, I need to be careful because if I study too much, then my faith is going to go cold, and my heart is going to become dry, and I'm going to lose my love for God, and that shouldn't be the case at all.

In fact, the more we study, the more we should fall in love with God.

And the more accurately we understand God and the outworking of his plan, the more that should light our hearts on fire to pursue him passionately.

And the end of studying the Bible, it's not an end in itself, but it's to a deeper relationship with God.

And so Jesus tells us that the way we glorify God in the midst of persecution is first of all, don't be led astray.

But we find a second way we glorify God in the midst of persecution.

And he says, secondly, don't be terrified.

He says that in verse 9, and it's a call to trust.

He says, and when you hear Hear of wars and tumults, do not be terrified.

I make a mistake every morning.

In fact, I did it this morning, and I wasn't going to do it.

And just kind of the siren song.

I read the newspaper and looked at the headlines.

I go online to see the latest events and scroll down to see what's happening, what's the latest with the Ebola, what's going on in the Middle East and what's happened in the Ukraine and what's going on in Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria and in the Middle East.

And I go on and invariably as I do this, I get more and more discouraged, despondent, depressed.

I begin to look at everything, and it just weighs on my heart as I see everything that's going on.

And things are going from bad to worse, the world's burning, civilization is crumbling, society's eroding, morals are disintegrating, wickedness is becoming prevalent, immorality is celebrated.

I just read a story this morning about a four-square pastor and his wife who own a chapel and they're being sued by the city because they won't perform homosexual marriages in their own private chapel.

I look at all the wars that are going on.

One historian wrote 46 years ago, he said, war is one of the constants of history and is not diminished with civilization or democracy.

And he says, in the last 3,421 years of recorded history, only 268 of those years have seen no war.

He wrote that 46 years ago, and the 46 years since then, we've seen 46 years of war.

There will be wars and rumors of wars.

They were in the time of Christ, they will be, they are now, and they will be, and we'll see in increasing measure looking forward.

Every civilization and every generation has these problems, and they will continue until the end.

Christianity is a minority in our culture.

But Christianity has always been a minority in our culture, in every culture.

Narrow is the way and straight is the path that leads to life, and few there be that find it.

Wide is the way and broad is the gate that leads to death.

Every generation of Christians has been a minority in culture.

But now in many circles, we're a despised minority.

What's our natural response to persecution?

I know mine.

Fear and self-preservation.

When I'm being persecuted, I want to protect myself and I become afraid of what might happen, the uncertainty of the future.

And I realize as bad as things are in our culture, I look around the world and I see how much worse that they can be.

I wonder what it would be like to be a Christian in Yemen or Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia or in different sections of communist countries.

How would I respond in those circumstances?

We're going to talk about this again in two weeks when we look at the persecuted church around the world, but I think, how would I respond in those circumstances?

And what Jesus says is, don't be terrified.

Don't be terrified.

The opposite of fear is trust.

How can we trust in the midst of persecution?

How do we know that we can trust God?

First of all, we look at the cross.

How do we know that God loves us?

How do we know that God is the deliverer?

We look at the cross and we see Jesus Christ, who came because of God's great love, who died on the cross for our sins and rose victoriously physically on the third day.

We look at the cross and we see the love of God for us and we know that He is our deliverer.

And what would seem on the surface to be the most evil injustice ever perpetrated against an innocent man, God provided forgiveness and salvation to all who trust in Christ.

And he promises his believers that all who are living in him, that all things will work together for good, that God is at work.

And God doesn't create evil, but he is able to use it for his own purpose and glory.

And so we can trust in him in the midst of persecution.

Many remember the story of Jim Elliott, who was a missionary to the Yaka Indians.

In 1956, he and four other missionaries were slaughtered by the very people they were there to reach.

It was an awful tragedy, but God put on the heart of Jim's widow, Elizabeth Elliot, to pray for the people who had killed her husband.

And as her heart was healing from the pain of her loss, she planned to go down and continue his work.

And she was able to see some of the very people who took part in her husband's death come to personal faith in Jesus Christ.

Jesus says something here that on the surface might seem like a contradiction.

Look at what he says in verse 16.

He says, You will be delivered up by even parents and brothers and relatives, and some of you they will put to death.

Some of you they will put to death.

You will die for your faith in Jesus Christ.

And then look what he says a couple verses later in verse 18.

But not a hair of your head will perish.

Jesus says something similar in Luke's uh earlier in Luke's gospel.

He says in chapter 12, verse 4, I tell you, my friends, uh, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more they can do to you.

In essence, what he says is they can kill your body, but they can't touch you.

They can kill your body, they can kill this uh earthly tent that you have, this body that God has given you in this life, but they cannot touch the essence of who you are.

They cannot touch your soul.

And every believer who dies in Christ, Paul says that he knows that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, which is far better.

And everyone who dies in Christ, we know that one day, when Christ returns for us, the dead in Christ shall rise.

We will receive renewed, glorified bodies that will be perfect.

And so ultimately they can do nothing to who we are at the very core, that even our very bodies will rise from the dead perfectly whole.

And so, even though some of you they will kill, but not a hair of your head will perish.

We glorify God in the midst of persecution by not being led astray and and by not being terrified.

But there's a third way that Jesus gives here to glorify God in the midst of persecution, and that is don't stop witnessing.

It's a call to proclamation.

Look in verse uh 13 and 14.

He says here in the midst of persecution of verse 12, he says, they will, he says, This will be your opportunity to bear witness.

Settle it therefore in your minds not to meditate beforehand how to answer, for I will give you a mouth and wisdom which none of your adversaries will be able to withstand or contradict.

Jesus says, Don't stop witnessing.

This was a particular promise to the disciples during the coming persecution they were about to face during the time of Jerusalem destruction.

This was a specific promise to the apostles.

It wasn't a promise to pastors and how we write our sermons.

Don't think about what to say in advance because God will give you the words to say when you need to say it.

And so I really should just not write sermons anymore and just come up and open my Bible.

That's not what Jesus is saying here.

But there is a principle that applies to all of us.

At that time, and again, in future times, will be a time of persecution, of betrayal by family and friends, of intimidation and incarceration and ultimately martyrdom.

And Jesus says, in the midst of this, now is the time to proclaim the gospel.

What is our temptation in the midst of persecution?

Fear leads us to be quiet.

Fear leads us to be guarded and measured in our words, to go along, to get along.

Fear causes us to think we shouldn't stir up trouble, we shouldn't rock the boat, we need to keep our head down, we shouldn't draw attention to ourselves.

Fear causes us to be quiet.

It's easy to tell ourselves that in times of persecution, surely Jesus doesn't want us to put ourselves out there for possible punishment.

But Jesus tells us to witness.

Witnessing is telling what you've seen and heard and experienced in the gospel of what Jesus has done in your life and what you've learned through his word.

And I believe there's a principle here for us that we can rest in that when you are in the midst of persecution, God will give you enabling grace to endure.

And to endure not weakly and in fear, but in a quiet confidence that enables you to stand firm and to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.

You know, it's hard for us to think about what I would do in a situation like that.

And maybe right now, as you're thinking about, you're thinking, I don't think I could ever do that.

And right now you're not in the middle of it.

You probably can't.

But as you walk faithfully with God and grow in your faith and study his word and rely on the Holy Spirit and are built up day by day, when you find yourself in that situation, God will give you the grace and strength and the power of the Holy Spirit to stand firm.

And so we learn and study and pray and grow, and in times of quiet, it's times of preparation because persecution is coming and persecution is here.

There's one final way we glorify God in the midst of persecution, and it's found in the last verse in this section.

And that is don't give up.

It's a call to perseverance.

He says, by your endurance you will gain your lives.

Jesus tells us to endure, he tells us to persevere, and endurance or perseverance is an active endeavor.

It's not saying let go and let God and just resting on our laurels.

It's an active pursuit of God each day.

And faithfulness is the unmistakable mark of a true believer.

We persevere because God preserves us.

It's God's grace that saves us and holds us, but also it's God's grace that enables us to seek Him and to walk with Him.

So perseverance isn't just a matter of the will, it's not our intestinal fortitude.

It's not just grinning and bearing it, it's not putting on a stoic face and just continuing to move forward.

It is a humble dependence and reliance upon the Holy Spirit moment by moment and day by day.

And so Jesus says, don't give up.

Persecution is coming.

Persecution has been the reality of the church for 2,000 years.

Persecution is the daily reality of our generation.

And so Jesus says, don't be led astray.

Don't be terrified.

Don't stop witnessing.

Don't give up.

Let me leave you with five practical practices to prepare you to glorify God in the midst of persecution.

And each one of these begins with the letter R.

Five practical ways to prepare to glorify God in the midst of persecution.

First of all, remember the gospel.

Remember what Jesus suffered to secure your forgiveness and justification.

Remember the love of your Father demonstrated by the cross.

Second, rely on the power of the Holy Spirit.

In poverty and neediness, cry out to God for the enabling strength of the Holy Spirit.

In humility, turn to him in dependence.

Third, rejoice in the midst of persecution.

You don't rejoice for the persecution, but you rejoice in what God is doing in the midst of persecution, both in strengthening you as well as glorifying himself and proclaiming the gospel.

Fourth, reflect on God's faithfulness.

Throughout the Bible, we see God's people suffer yet never without purpose, and always with God's faithfulness.

And so we can look at the lives of others and look in history and look in the Bible and see and reflect on God's faithfulness and know that he continues to be faithful.

And finally, rest in God's sovereignty.

Know that your suffering in some mysterious way is a part of God's plan to bring glory to himself and others to him.

So remember the gospel, rely on the power of the Holy Spirit, rejoice in the midst of persecution, reflect on God's faithfulness, and rest in his sovereignty.

And it's through that that we find victory in Jesus.

And so join now as we sing our closing song, Victory in Jesus, as Pat comes in and leads us.

Encourage you to turn to that song in 473 as we prepare to sing together.